Did Viking Mars Landers Find Life's Building Blocks?

[Tank]

Did Viking Mars Landers Find Life's Building Blocks? Missing Piece Inspires New Look at Puzzle

ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2010) â€" Experiments prompted by a 2008 surprise from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander suggest that soil examined by NASA's Viking Mars landers in 1976 may have contained carbon-based chemical building blocks of life...

It appears that something unexpected in the Martian soil buggered up the Viking landers tests for organic compounds!

[Dretlin]

Fascinating!

I remember watching a program that suggested life could exist on Mars beneath its crust. More missions sound good to me.  

[PoopShoot]

For me it's a bit of a "so what?".  Carbon is the fourth(?) most common element in the universe.  Finding carbon doesn't mean finding organic molecules and finding organic molecules doesn't mean finding life.  Without a bit more discovery (finiding better evidence of forming life IS interesting), there's nothing to see here.

[Tank]

For me it's a bit of a "so what?".  Carbon is the fourth(?) most common element in the universe.  Finding carbon doesn't mean finding organic molecules and finding organic molecules doesn't mean finding life.  Without a bit more discovery (finiding better evidence of forming life IS interesting), there's nothing to see here.

While you are correct that Carbon is very abundant that is not what the Viking mission is supposed to have missed as it wasn't looking for pure Carbon, but organic molecules that contain Carbon. The chemical reactions of organic molecules differ. The experiment on the Viking lander was designed on the basis that perchlorate would not be present in the Martian soil and the Viking results were interpreted in light of that assumption. However we now know that perchlorate is present in the Martian soil. When Vikings original findings are re-examined in the light of the new fact the result may be interpreted in a new way.

[PoopShoot]

Well then.  Slightly more interesting.